Partnership

CCiC is one of the most important events for the project exchange of Chinese teams in the annual iGEM competition. This year, we participated in the CCiC event hosted by ShanghaiTech University. Affected by the epidemic, this year 's CCiC event was also held online. Through this meeting, we exchanged with Shanghai Jiao Tong University the latest developments in dry and wet experiments, HP, modeling, etc., deepened the friendship between the two teams, and also promoted follow-up cooperation. Particularly on the experimental aspect, we exchanged our parts to verify that each other's experimental results were correct.

The core of our partnership is the exchange of wet lab parts. At the meeting, we learned that the DNA fragments they stored were only 800 bp. But our DNA data sequence is 5700bp, including many repetitive sequences. The existence of repetitive sequences is unstable for DNA, which is very helpful for the characterization of their projects. If their system can perfectly protect repeated long sequences, it is sufficient to prove that their system is good enough. Therefore, our team proposed to connect our DNA data sequence with their plasmids, and their team will carry out subsequent transformation and characterization. Our team's task is to construct recombinant plasmids and mail E. coli to their team.

Apart from wet lab, we also collaborated with each other in other areas ,like HP & education. Since both of our projects are based on DNA storage, we have jointly written the DNA storage handbook, which is used to popularize the knowledge about DNA storage to the public and promote our projects. The DNA storage handbook is mainly divided into three parts. The first part introduces the background of DNA storage, the second part introduces the technology closely related to DNA storage, and the last part introduces the application scenarios of DNA storage.

The background of DNA storage consists of three aspects, it will successively explain the structural basis of DNA to store data, the historical background and the practical significance of DNA storage. The technology closely related to DNA storage includes five aspects, which are DNA sequence synthesis (divided into chemical synthesis and biosynthesis), modification, information encryption, encapsulation (divided into physical encapsulation and biological encapsulation) and sequencing. The application scenarios for DNA storage includes three applications, large-scale data storage, novel data encryption, and molecular diagnostics based on DNA computing.

We hope that the public will take a new perspective on DNA storage and gain a deeper understanding of our project by reading this DNA storage handbook.

The handbook can be downloaded here.

In order to further promoting our projects and DNA storage, we started a new way of cooperation. A brochure concentrating on DNA information storage is produced together to popularize the technology ,the brochures were well received among the college students of our schools. What's more, we have launched a week-long activity to post seven popular science articles for a week to introduce the DNA information storage technology to readers from the development history, current situation, advantages, challenges, opportunities and various applications. In order to stimulate their interest in synthetic biology, let more people learn about DNA storage and devote themselves to related research, and let non-biology students know more about the frontier knowledge of synthetic biology. We strived to ensure that the content of our lectures is closer to life and made sure that the content is both scientific and popular so that most people can understand it.

In addition, we will also send DNA storage handbooks to readers who subscribe to the articles via e-mail, bringing readers knowledge and aesthetic enjoyment.

When it comes to what we learn from this partnership, we identified the following important gains from this fruitful partnership:

I: We have learned a lot of skills in carrying out HP activities and we have completed a lot of HP activities together. In these activities, we not only let more people learn about DNA storage from the history of DNA storage to the applications of DNA storage, we also get inspiration from people who have no contact with our project, and our project benefited a lot.

II: Through a series of human practice activities, we learned about the broad interest of people of all ages in synthetic biology, which proved that it is necessary for us to promote synthetic biology. Only when more people understand and pay attention to synthetic biology can this science advance and develop better.

III：The partnership with SJTU-BioX-Shanghai made us realize the importance of collaboration and communication with teams from different perspectives. The process of communicating with them has broadened our thinking and improved our relationship with different backgrounds and different personalities. The skills of people working together. It is a great experience to help each other complete projects in mutual assistance. And we believe this experience will be unforgettable for any iGEM team.